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@utopia I like your sense of humour. We need it when our dreams for good relationships turn sour.

One thing that my ex did was try and make his ex .. jealous about him being with me ... it was daft & immature ... tho they were both a lot older than me (10 and 15 years) ... and did nothing to consolidate his relationship with me ...When I finally had a few hours free with my own children to care for he was always moping about her and complaining about her Sz tendencies ... when I had put a lot of effort in helping him manage his. It wore me down ... and in the end turned me off ... he never could express gratitude ... while I was grateful for shoes, coats and beds for my kids ...now at least my son realises that I always have been genuine and inclusive regarding mental health Dx ... and that his dad is just one person ...in a peoplescape full of struggling humans. Dx or not. And that his dad had a lot of opportunity and support, whereas others faced stigma.

even his ex .. benefitted as I was identifying with our bub ... as the daughter of 2 parents with Sz .. and determined to give the natural mother a good chance ... it was in family therapy that I heard that her endless late night phone calls were a form of abuse .. but by then I was such a wreck it took many years to gain the confidence to leave and then many years to recover.

I believe you @utopia

I was like that except the cultures I was not sure about were the dominant American and Australian middle class cultures! Our circumstances were unique, but the more I talk with people. Everybody's circumstances are unique. There is so much mixing and intermarriage. It can be part of the exoticness and attraction. Culture plays a huge part in family connectedness and disconnectedness. With break ups we do need to be able to talk about it without being closed down for fear of racism. I only realised I was a stepmother about 6 years into the situation, when my 2nd daughter was told off at entry to primary school, by a teacher that I was not her sister's real mother ... Eyes opened.

By about 10 years of that, with all the deaths, I was very agonised, borderline catatonic and frenzied at times, but still functioning in many areas. I had to sacrifice all my biological relationships to his requirements. After separation I became a bit legalistic and scientific in my thinking in an attempt to try and get to the bottom of all of it. I did not apply my scientific side to family earlier as I blindly did my best to love them all and that family of origin stuff was ALL just too DEEP and complicated to be fathomed. So now I do call the chiild I took on a first daughter, my biological children's half sibling. I personally had no legal rights just responsibilities. The ex played people off against each other to feel important and fought over. He did a great job of that with my foster girl and my first born. They are so different, cant really be close, though all the daily care was interwoven in shared prams, bathtimes, food and table, and bedrooms etc ...There was no talk like that when I actually lived with and was raising her. In many ways she got better deals than my kids as my hands were always tied. He would not have even gotten custody without me. Maybe if I had sent them to separate schools, but at that time it did not happen often. I was trying to socialise them well and the girls do have very good social skills.

The lines were blurred in so many ways. Where my responsibilities started and finished were not clear. Last week in therapy. my psychologist scoffed at how disgraceful it was that I was expected to take ALL the day to day care 24/7 for 16 years without any support for authority. It has taken this long to get that understanding. Does not really help my daughter or son, but it keeps me alive.

Anyway thats all about me. I hope you dont mind if I call@eth over to this thread, she recently thought I had it all sorted re my daughters, but that is only at a superficial level. Each interaction I have currently, causes me to reflect on what happened when my 3 kids were growing up. I tried the impossibie and ended up in the moon.

Now I have to feed the cat!

Thanks for reading and talking. I could not do it in a normal social way 20-30 years ago when all the stuff was happening.

I have also tried to reach over Aussie, Polish, Latin American and Chinese cultural differences with my siblings marriages and kids. Culture and ethnicity needs to be brought out because glossing over such things means losing a cohesive story or causal links.... and so on to mental illness ...

Hi @Appleblossom I didn't think you had it all sorted, more like taken a step back and not engaging in a poor relationship dynamic - hoping this is closer to your reality than the impression I gave.

Man - aren't relationships complicated? If we are so evolved, how come we stuff it up so much? I think non human animals have better ways of interacting with each other.

I am trying to navigate new relationships now that I have moved on. I often wish I could go back in time and make more informed choices but that's not possible. I am at the stage whereImy self esteem has improved and I realise that I deserve more in life than what I got.

I suppose it makes me picky but that's probably not a bad thing. I was always inclined to see the good in everyone and give them the benefit of the doubt often to my detriment. Need to use my head and my heart, put myself first - not in a selfish way but in order to self preserve.

Dating tricks @utopia - sounds intriguing?? Care to share??

@eth No worries I did not want to give a false impression, thats all. I am maternal in my way. It is healing for me to say that now. Now I realise how unusual my childhood actually was, and OTT the early marriage was. I have emerged from the agonised confusion of soup that was my disturbed soul for a few years. Not many would actually go the distance I did without a pregnancy. I certainly would not willingly abandon a child I birthed, but it might look like that. At the time I was naive in odd ways. There had not been many divorces in the family.

@soul Maybe modern life is complicated and people are becoming more complicated by the challenges we face. I remember your opening posts about relationships. Can only say best wishes ...

@utopia Sad about the 2 brothers not speaking the same language yet. The father has responsibility to engender some bonding and connection ... .

My Latin American nephews had the Spanish thing for years. Different languages both divides and makes for communication. My Aussie and half chinese nephews (same dad) were never on the same page, only in a couple of photos for mother. It was hard for my son as he connected with them all when he was little but the cousins all spread apart not of his doing. It was very obviously a form of control of the child that the mothers used ... to NOT use English ... to exclude other relationships from forming. Both the mothers were fluent in English as well as Spanish (my sister) and Mandarin (sisterinlaw). My mother was NOT fluent in English when I was born and I FELT connected to HER and to father and to Indigenous People. Thats stretching across a lot of different cultural boundaries. We have all been "stretched". No wonder I turned into a pretzel. lol I was more angry and bitter, but the music, teaching, community work and zoo help a lot.

Thanks for the good company.

I hope you all have a good night. Start of a new week.